Lumber Liquidators faces criminal charges for importing illegally harvested wood

Lumber Liquidators on Wednesday revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice is contemplating criminal charges under the Lacey Act for importing illegally harvested wood. Lumber Liquidators’ stock value dropped by nearly 20 percent immediately following the news.  Lumber Liquidators has been under federal investigation since September 2013, when the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) published its report “Liquidating the Forests”, which documented that Lumber Liquidators imported large quantities of wood illegally sourced in the Russian Far East.  In response to yesterday’s announcement, Alexander von Bismarck, Executive Director of EIA, said, “We were in Russia and ...